BitTorrent Community Running For Cover? 740
govatos writes "Bandwidth issues and DOS Attacks brought Bytemonsoon, a popular BitTorrent
page down, but now pages are closing for scarier reasons. Torrentse.cx 'recieved a cease and desist letter during the day of Wednesday, July 16, 2003 for copyright infringement. The entire website has been removed and will not return.' Will corporate pressure kill the BitTorrent movement, or will it keep flying from site to site before it settles somewhere 'safe' like Sealand's HavenCo?"
All your fancy freedom rhetoric aside (Score:2, Insightful)
The redhat iso is about 0.00000000001% of all bittorrent traffic.
Btw, pr0n is copyrighted too, just like any other piece of entertainment.
Somewhere 'safe' can be 'anywhere' (Score:2, Insightful)
Why would need an offshore hosting solution? Bittorrent files are just index/key files right? Same as eMule, eDonkey, etc. No central host required. Here one day, gone the next, so what?
Demand creates supply (Score:2, Insightful)
As for the illegal transaction side, as long as the demand remains (and it's enormous), people will create sites for torrents. It'll take more then DDoS attacks and cease and desist letters to stop pirates. One one good site goes down, another will spring up.
Still a single point of failure (Score:4, Insightful)
If only they combined the decentralization tracking of other p2p protocols with BitTorrent's distributed and simultaneous upload and download, we'd have a winner.
Safe? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm stupid but.... (Score:2, Insightful)
There will never be a solution ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't know how much sense that made, but p2p is too big to stop now, even with a million bazillion lawsuits.
Re:Somewhere 'safe' can be 'anywhere' (Score:2, Insightful)
BitTorrent is a valid technology (Score:5, Insightful)
I've used BitTorrent once or twice myself, and found it to be a good system. That's only once or twice, because there just isn't that much legally distributable material that can reach the required "critical mass" for BitTorrent to be effective and necessary.
Nevertheless, the fact that there are proven legitimate uses of the code should be enough to prevent the code from disappearing. That, and all the copies that are already downloaded.
The real question is whether people will feel safe to post BitTorrent links even when they are distributing something that is 100% legit.
BitTorrent has one major advantage/disadvantage relative to Freenet. You can control what material you are involved in the re-distribution of to match whatever your defintion of "fair use" is. With Freenet you distribute everything or you distribute nothing because you don't know what anything is.
Personally, I prefer the BitTorrent approach. It would be a shame if the RIAA dogs force everyone to the "know nothing" approach.
Simple Solution (Score:4, Insightful)
The same thing goes for other content. Look at Homestar Runner [homestarrunner.com]. They offer the content for free, and make money off of the merchandise - its a great formula. Just this week they introduced a set of figurines, and in the first day brought in over $15,000!
Re:All your fancy freedom rhetoric aside (Score:4, Insightful)
Legit use of P2P (Score:2, Insightful)
BitTorrent is one of those apps that proves that P2P does have legitimate uses... and everyone I know who uses it, doesn't use it for distributing/obtaining warez...
The *AA can't have that, or their argument that "P2P has no other use than to distribute pirated media" becomes moot when it is clearly shown that THERE ARE legitimate uses for P2P software...
A Better Question (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't click on a *.cx link. (Score:2, Insightful)
Duuuh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:All your fancy freedom rhetoric aside (Score:2, Insightful)
Warez sites are warez sites, and I dont cry when they get shut down. Noones sending a cease and decist to ID for wanting to distribute their stuff with bittorent, but torrentse.cx was just another warez site.
And no, a stupid little "disclaimer" saying "we are not responsible for whatever you trade" does nothing to protect you.
Re:All your fancy freedom rhetoric aside (Score:4, Insightful)
-dbc
HavenCo isn't safe (Score:3, Insightful)
They're just not motivated to, yet.
Re:As an attorney... (Score:5, Insightful)
for one of the aggrieved parties, let me just say that BitTorrent is nothing short of the Denial of Service attack. I hope they are taken down. When is /. going to learn that you can't flood sites, steal music, or copy DVDs without repercussion?
BitTorrent is nothing like a Denial Of Service attack, infact, it's the exact opposite.
If 99% of the population wants to copy music, and we live in a free world where Democracy wins against tyranny, why is it that 99% of the population are being oppressed by draconian ideals that are out of date in the modern world we live in? Why are they wrong in this democracy? Society should serve the many, not the few, and certanly not the dollar.
Maybe if the aggrieved parties are so concerned about money, they should just get a different job? Like everyone else who doesn't have enough money? Just like coal miners and town cryers have been superseded, so now have shit artists!
Re:As an attorney... (Score:5, Insightful)
Government does the things that it does because people like you bitch & rant on messageboards or to your friends, but never take your concerns beyond that.
Bittorrent vs Piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
But, it has some serious shortcomings that need to be addressed. For a technology that promises infinitely scalable bandwidth, the tracker isn't very scalable at all. Multi-tracker functions (both the interconnectivity of trackers and the use of multiple isolated trackers within the torrent) are an absolute must for this technology to prosper. Also, an apache mod where you could simply upload the file to your web server and not have to worry about running a bittorrent "seed" would be great. From the companies standpoint nothing has really changed, but instead of everyone flooding your website to get this file, the file is only accessible by your bittorrent tracker, so your bandwidth remains consistent. And the company doesn't need to run a separate seed process for the thousands of files it may be serving, the apache mod would only open connections for files that are requested by the tracker (which would only request the file if the full file wasn't already being distributed by those connected).
As for the piracy aspect, I don't really see it going anywhere but I also don't see it growing. There is always going to be some site where you can upload torrents, and that site will always die within 6 months only to be replaced by another.
Re:All your fancy freedom rhetoric aside (Score:2, Insightful)
Where I live [Ottawa, Ontario]. Many drivers "slide" through stop lines [specially in residential areas where kids and such walk], they speed, merge without signaling, change langes inappropriate [many seem to think you cutoff people instead of going behind], etc.
Should we just make the law state "You can drive crazy if you want since everyone seems todo it?"
Or should we make the punishments more severe? Personally I think people rolling through stop lines should be fined 500$. I think speeders should have their license revoked. If the cops spent a day doing a traffic blitz they could probably catch a few hundred people [town of 50K here...] easy.
Similarly, make piracy a huge penalty [e.g. compute ceased, fined 1000$ or etc] and blitz every so often.
Of course there are extremes. E.g. "oh the RIAA is going after legit users". But if the law is followed correctly going after pirates could be more productive.
I still say make it a sport. If you report a pirate [who is convicted] you get x % of the fines. Get the geeks to hunt the pirates!
Tom
So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
It was designed as a way for people to distribute large files without paying gobs for bandwidth.
Wonderful.
So who do you think shut them down? Why? Because the RIAA will destroy any alternate distribution channel, regardless of content carried. If you have not noticed, the "promotion" business is mostly about suppressing other content. If a DoS won't do it, the **AA's will put their own content up and then send a cease and dissist letter.
The **AA are going to fail sooner or later. Their technology is simply obsolete and others are starting to produce too much for them to squash. They don't have the resources to fight everyone, and that's what it's comming to. They have enough money and resources to make a few people sorry before they go away. You have to wonder why they bother.
Re:Still a single point of failure (Score:2, Insightful)
Regardless of whether I'm downloading a DVD-rip or a linux ISO, if my tracker gets shut down (be it by *AA influence/costs/technical problem) I'm not going to be able to get that file. So there is still a need for some decentralization before bittorrent can be used with any kind of reliability.
And, even though I may be downloading a legal file, people may be using the tracker to download illegal files.
So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, hosting a Bit Torrent seed for a copyrighted file is no different then hosting the file itself, other then the lowered bandwidth bill.
Shutting down BT wouldn't make any more sense then banning HTTP or SMTP, both of which can be used to infringe copyright. BitTorrent is hugely helpful for small content developers who want to distribute their work, especially if they become popular.
Nope (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not about Bittorrent. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's got no more to do with Bittorrent than a pirate ftp site has to do with ftp. You don't blame FTP, you blame the site.
This is not at all the same thing as p2p networks.
Re:All your fancy freedom rhetoric aside (Score:2, Insightful)
Inane. These do not follow. Most books lack copyright protection too. I think you'll find the reason lies behind production and duplication budgeting.
do you think they careWell, actually, yes. They have their own "interest group" on Piracy ( PMAA, perhaps ), which due to being at the office I'm not going to go hunting for on the net - but they've been mentioned several times here on Slashdot before. They take internet piracy of their work quite seriously, because many parts of the industry wish to move to internet centric distribution models.
The adult industry are content providers and are entitled to the same protection as any other content provider. Just because they are held in low esteem by the moral minority or that they do distribute a lot of free content as 'bait' doesn't mean that they have been abridged of these rights.
YLFIBT sucks for piracy! (Score:3, Insightful)
Depending on the sort of illegitimate content you're looking for or distributing, try some other protocol. Freenet, or Gnutella2 or something else based on supernodes, will work a lot better than BitTorrent.
Re:All your fancy freedom rhetoric aside (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm real worried about Kazaa's future with numbers like that.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Such a load of crap (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, the Animatrix shorts (the 4 free ones) or the Red vs Blue movies were valid uses that would have recently been crushed by slashdotting.
Bittorrent is the kind of enabling technology that can keep artists like the guys behind RvB from going under when they get popular... to suggest that nailing pirate sites is going to kill this great technology is just dumb.
Re:All your fancy freedom rhetoric aside (Score:3, Insightful)
Point being that if the warez trackers are having trouble, the ones using it for legitimate purposes (downloading open source ISOs, etc..) are unaffected.
Makes it that much harder to claim that the protocol/code has no legitimate uses. If the RIAA/MPAA has a problem with some content, then go after that site. Leave those of us downloading RedHat 9 alone.
Valid use for the technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Facts (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see the amount of accidents each of these cause in our province [cyberbeach.net]:
Ignoring traffic controls (ie: stop signs/lines/whatever) - 4%
Speeding - 1%
Failing to signal / inappropriate lane changes: 3%
Grand total: Accidents reduced by an absolute maximum of 8%. In fact, if it works as well as the photoradar blitz, accidents would be reduced by 0.5%. Somewhat less effective than the war on drugs. Well, a lot more than just "somewhat" less effective...
>Personally I think people rolling through stop lines should be fined 500$. I think speeders should have their license revoked. If the cops spent a day doing a traffic blitz they could probably catch a few hundred people [town of 50K here...] easy.
Personally, I think, as the stats suggest, there should be an enforced "dangerous conditions" speed (7% of crashes). Clearly driving when the weather is good is simply not a problem for Ontarians.
Also helpful would be proper patrolling of yeild signs (10% of crashes), and making it easier to arrest people for following too close (7% of crashes). I'd suggest a law about losing control of a vehicle (8% of crashes), but I think it's usually too late when that happens, anyways.
Technically, it should be illegal to drive properly (45% of crashes), but that's just plain silly.
I also think that speeds should be increased (the amount of people's lives that could be saved by ambulances being able to get to their destinations faster [from less traffic being on the roads] likely outstrips the "risks", which are so small they likely fall within the possible mistake zone of the statistics).
>Similarly, make piracy a huge penalty [e.g. compute ceased, fined 1000$ or etc] and blitz every so often.
Great. So you want to deny access to computers for piracy? Are you sure you've never taped a Hockey game? Do you realize this means offenders would have to be denied their right to use a phone? Do you realize that would mean the government would have to continue to support an extremely expensive and outmoded paper-based infrastructure?
Basically, you'll end up paying for their crimes.
Which reminds me, $1,000 would be a bargain if that's what it really was. In fact, it's usually more around the $100 - $200,000 range. A lot of pirate BBS sysops lost their homes, despite having, at best, maybe $20,000 of pirated software on their machines.
>If you report a pirate [who is convicted] you get x % of the fines. Get the geeks to hunt the pirates!
Yes, let's move from being a socialist country to being a dictatorship! You do realize that the method of control you suggest was the very most popular form of control used during Hitler's regime, right (it's simply a fact -- I'm not invoking Godwin's law here)? And that it was used as a control measure by the soviet union until the cold war was over?
Since we're making up laws to suit ourselves, though, let's outlaw those separate schools. I'm tired of paying for children to be brain damaged, and taught to violate our laws. And it's time to get rid of the CRTC (who make it illegal to have multicultural TV -- only Canadian monoculture is easily available) -- AND I'm tired of having these signals beamed at my house from space and not being able to manipulate them at will. It should be my right to do with any signals being sent to me, against my will, as I wish.
Re:All your fancy freedom rhetoric aside (Score:1, Insightful)
In the US, we have DUI laws. (btw, I don't drink.) Now, I don't believe driving impaired is a good thing and I am fully aware of the public health and personal risk involved. But we don't have IMPAIRMENT laws. We have DUI laws.
What ended up happening is a lot of people who are not impaired getting DUIs. How? DUI is a legal definition supported by medical and public health research numbers. However, I know people that have a single drink and are blitzed. Their blood alcohol is nowhere near
See, it's a DUI law under the premise of impairment.
People's physiologies are different. The law does not account for that.
Meanwhile, you can drive home exhausted, drowsy, buy OTC drugs that nuke your senses, or be in a bad mood, and otherwise be wholly stupidly directing a 2 ton moving machine, and the law cannot touch you unless you do something stupid or visibly drive recklessly.
The law does not care about impairment. It cares about BAC, a wholly different standard. Now, some states now have laws against "sleepy" drivers, but nothing like the DUI laws in many states. Personally, I think the law should be a process--if you drive reckless AND get pulled over for that AND are found to have a BAC too high, that's a DUI. In many states, they can corral you and test your BAC without cause besides "driving is a privilege, your on the road, your subject to our screen."
As to your other driving annoyances, from 16-23, I drove like a nut. Sped everywhere, ran lights, etc. I got 1, yes, that's a one, warning, no violations.
Age 24, I got a speeding ticket. 2am, highway, no one on it, going 90mph on a 4 lane highway. Full moon, clear. Drive that highway during the day, you travel in wolf packs of around 10-15 cars, 1 car length between each car at most, at a minimum of 80 mph. Pass cops, they don't do squat. Hell, they ride between the wolf packs sometimes.
Since that ticket, I've been a good boy. I don't speed, 2 sec stops, don't run lights. I've gotten 2 tickets since then. I'm now 28.
Why? I realize it has NOTHING to do with traffic violations. It has to do with enforcement. I go home at 2-4am in the morning. Cops just nail you at night, looking for drunks, and will pull you over if they think you are speeding. My favorite quote--he (being I) was in the other lane speeding, so I turned around and tailed him. Funny thing was, I wasn't speeding. Where the cop "passed" me was when I made a left turn...after waiting for a red light.
iow, enforcement only matters at certain times of the day.
I don't agree with pirating. But HOW one makes the rules, how those rules are interpreted, is just as important. The RIAA knows that the more they shut off P2P, the more their business model will suffer. They just like the idea of control over money, because they see in the future that control leading to economic advantage and more money.
I don't see a student who downloads a pirater. The RIAA does. I see a student who downloads and never buys a CD a pirater. The former wants to check things out conveniently. The latter wants something for nothing.
Re:Facts (Score:1, Insightful)
Just like I could discharge a firearm in the city and probably not kill anyone. Doesn't make that a good idea either.
Second, I don't see what the problem is with ceasing pirates computers. If you drive drunk your license is taking away. If you smuggle goods your car can be impounded. Why should pirates be protected? Even better is when the computer belongs to the parents and its the kid doing the piracy. It will teach parents a lesson that ignoring their responsibilities is their fault.
Third, w.r.t. the "self-policing societies". We already have that [sans the predicted anarchy you described]. For example, "americas most wanted" and "crimestoppers" both work on the sole premise of citizens reporting crimes/facts/tips. We don't live in complete anarchy or dictatorships as far as I can tell.
If I'm at a college [which I am] and people around me in a lab are pirating [which they do often] I'd love to report them, collect say 100$ for getting them convicted. Not only do I pocket 100$ but I get bandwidth wasting jackasses off the already stressed computer network.
Sorry your bleeding heart liberal arguments don't quite cut it.
Tom
Re:All your fancy freedom rhetoric aside (Score:2, Insightful)
Admitedly I'm guilty of belonging to this group. My friends pirate movies and for the longest time I thought it was cool.
However, that being said I don't actively pirate music/video/software nor do support it. Heck I bought a copy of WinXP [despite the fact I currently use Linux] so if I do need to use Windows I have a legit copy.
Nobody is perfect but switching from a "ah its ok since nobody will notice" bullshit to "I'm going to stop pirating, start buying [or use free stuff] and not support friends/family who pirate".
It's really that simple. Nobody is suggesting we hang pirates [which is what you seem to be implying]. However, what would be wrong with reporting criminals?
I mean what if you were a cop [or agent of say the FBI, RCMP, etc..] and you're brother was pirating software. Would you just sit by since "reporting on friends breeds distrust" or would you uphold your oath to support the laws of the land?
Tom
Re:All your fancy freedom rhetoric aside (Score:2, Insightful)
People already do that a lot.. look on some of the channels on efnet and other irc networks.. its very common.
This is a really bad idea regardless... If I remember correctly, torrents require a centralized distributor. Even if you have the torrent, you need to connect to the (http-based) tracker.
Taking the tracker down is #1 priority if you're shutting down a torrent movement. Anyone downloading the torrent can connect to the tracker, the tracker is definitely easiest and first to die.
it's no different from host torrents on a website than dcc'ing it person to person. eventually you'll catch the wrong person's ear, they'll follow the torrent and kill the site. "thank you don't come again" for centralized distributing
Re:All your fancy freedom rhetoric aside (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:All your fancy freedom rhetoric aside (Score:3, Insightful)
Just the same, porn is consistently mistreated in the marketplace. I'll give you that. This is in part the fault of the industry, just as is the case with RIAA. Typical "feature" porn titles (e.g. "Brianna Loves Jenna", "Carribean Undercover") are priced for purchase by video stores. These titles, when new, list for in excess of $30. Prices may fall, slowly (e.g. five to seven year old Vivid/Wave titles are pretty much all under $10 now, in places where new movies can be purchased). Given the mentality of both raincoaters and casual viewers this price point is fairly outrageous. Casual viewers may find a scene or a performer they like, but probably not enough to justify purchase. Raincoaters frequently use terms like "used up" to describe stuff they've seen. Either way, you've got a product that isn't worth the price, except to a video store, that'll make its purchase pay for itself a hundred times over.
These are the same market forces that drive people to MP3s and P2P networks.
Re:All your fancy freedom rhetoric aside (Score:5, Insightful)
as another poster pointed out. speeding accounts for the cause of a whopping 1% of accidents. However, I'm willing to bet that "fear of getting a speeding ticket" accounts for a good 10% of accidents. Where I live, in upstate New York, people are generally afraid of the police. Driving around during rush hour I usually see about 2 or 3 accidents a day, and invariably there is a speed trap 200 to 300 feet before the accident. People see the speed trap, slam on the breaks (even if they weren't speeding), and get rear-ended.
The police need to stop screwing around with speed traps, where they succeed in doing nothing but scaring the populous and causing accidents, and start enforcing the laws that would actually prevent accidents. Reckless driving, changing lanes without signaling, speeding under unsafe weather conditions, following too close, etc.
Re:BitTorrent's use (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yup, the heat is on. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:All your fancy freedom rhetoric aside (Score:4, Insightful)
>So all you need is to develop a "jumping tracker" that hops from host to host
Don't get me wrong, I didn't mean to imply "it's not possible". I'm just trying to point out that BT in it's current form isn't meant for warez. BT was originally meant for mass distribution of the 'little guy'. Things like open source software without needing massive donations for bandwidth... not it's current abused state of mass distribution of copyright material. Something like that will definitely attract 'bad attention'.
Personally, I will hazard a guess that BT warez will evolve to a state like freenet: nothing centralized. However, the fact that sites like bytemonsoon and torrentse went down shouldn't have been surprising to -anybody-.
Really, when you offer so many pirated software programs on one single site, where a single click (sometimes... two!) would allow you to begin downloading illegal software.. it shouldn't be at all surprising that these sites were instantly gone after and shutdown. It's just incredibly stupid to be so large and so public for something so obviously illegal
Of course, i guess this wasn't so obvious to the webmasters, was it... ;)
Bytemonsoon had tons of warez ... (Score:5, Insightful)
BT is decentralized, so taking down trackers that just have warez doesn't take BT down for trackers that have legit files.
Re:This is not about Bittorrent. (Score:5, Insightful)
But see, this is Slashdot, and in the Slashdot world you're not allowed to blame anything and copyright does not exist. And no, this comment is not a troll, and those who mod it as such only prove my point further.
Here is what I base this comment on.
The RIAA started out by going after the makers of P2P software. Everyone here yelled "Its not the technology, stupid, is the file traders, go after them instead!" Then recently when the RIAA announced they were going to do precisely that, the same group that was yelling "go after the traders" all of a sudden got their panties in a twist and started crying about how the RIAA shouldn't do that.
Actually good for the BT "community" (Score:5, Insightful)
And geeze, does everything have to be a "community" these days? BT is more like FTP than it is like much of anything else. Why does it need a "community"? Can't it just be a tool that people use for various purposes?
I think you don't get the point (Score:4, Insightful)
You will think I put copyright authors in an impossible situation. But in fact, they just have to switch stategy by focusing on people who distibute their work without permission.
no problem for BitTorrent (Score:2, Insightful)
Torrents legal data. eg Linux ISO's, big patches
etc etc.
I see no problem with illegal warez sharing
Torrent sites being taken down. Same with misuse of P2P apps
grow up. use some sense. etc etc
Re:Facts (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:All your fancy freedom rhetoric aside (Score:4, Insightful)
I would not report him. Friends and family are the two things that are supposed to be more important to individuals than the law of the land.
If you go turning in all of your friends for anything illegal that you happen to witness, it's likely you won't have friends anymore.. because, well, you'd be a bad friend to have. Plus, it's impossible never do anything that infracts on the law. Especially here in the US where mere words are considered crimes.
I'm not saying if a friend goes out and commits homocide that you should protect them, just to rationalize a situation before blowing a whistle on someone.
Personally, I wouldn't turn anyone in on anything to do with theft from a corporation. This is a capitalist society. Anyone on the top has gotten there by breaking a few rules, so why should the rest of us (the poor people that funded and helped monopolies be what they are today) be the ones who always must play by the rules? It's a double standard in my eyes.
Btw, police officers are some of the biggest criminals we have. I recall in highschool, the kids that turned out to be cops were some of the worst people to associate with. Considering being a police officer requires little more than no felonies on your record and an 8th grade reading level. My assesment is that most officers would rather get paid $24k a year to be in control of other's fates than to make $45k a year in an office somewhere.
Pardon my disrespect for the legal system. It's a mess. How do I go about becoming a Canadian citizen again?
kill BitTorrent? (Score:5, Insightful)
To put it another way, too many people with technical knowledge to create or expand upon something wonderful such as BitTorrent allow their greed to cloud their judgement. It is possible to be greedy over non-physical posessions. Just think about how many people you know that horde movies and music, just to have them, most of which they have never even bothered to play.
What about email? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless of what we might think about the morality of downloading unauthorized content (and though I do like downloading the stuff as much as the next guy, I don't think that the fact that a big corporation put it out makes it right), copyright infringement is against the law, and the copyright-holders are perfectly within their rights to shut them down.
In my opinion, the torrentse.cx people, and all the other ones who use something so blatant as a public website to distribute copyrighted and widely available media--TV series, movies taped out of movie theaters, and so on--are just asking to be prosecuted. I mean, with Kazaa at least there's a veneer of anonymity--they have to subpoena your ISP to find out who you are. But with a website, about all you have to do is whois the domain. A website is still a website, and for crying out loud nobody's distributed copyrighted mp3s from unobfuscated websites for at least five years--they learned their lesson the last time the RIAA sued mp3 distribution websites. Quite frankly, I'm surprised torrentse.cx managed to stay around as long as it did.
the answer is no [Re:A Better Question] (Score:3, Insightful)
No. It's like asking : "Will the continued use of guns by criminals destroy its reputation as a good way to protect oneself ?"